Intellect

When listening to your lectures should we follow the intellectual meaning also?

Is there any intellectual meaning also' There is none. I am talking heart to the heart, being to the being. Don't lose your path in the forest of intellectuality, otherwise you will listen to something but that will not be what I am saying. If you want to listen to me, listen from the heart -- in fact from the navel, from the belly. Forget the head, so that the being can commune with the being. Only then the meaning will be mine. If you listen through the intellect the meaning will be given by you. You will have heard it, but I will not have said it. The last question is from Bodhidharma:

Osho, are you absolutely against intellect? Should one never use one's head at all?

I AM NOT ABSOLUTELY against intellect. It has its uses but they are very limited, and you have to understand their limitations. If you are working as a scientist you will have to use your intellect. It is a beautiful mechanism, but it is beautiful only if it remains a slave and does not become the master. If it becomes the master and overpowers you then it is dangerous. Mind as a slave to consciousness is a beautiful servant. Mind as a master of consciousness is a very dangerous master. The whole question is of emphasis. I am not absolutely against intellect -- I use intellect myself, how I can be against it? Right now, talking to you, I am using it. But I am the master; it is not my master. If I want to use it I use it. If I don't want to use it, it has…

Osho, if the intellect becomes such a major obstacle on the journey to self-realization, isn’t it futile to train and sharpen it? Wouldn’t it be better, to keep children’s simplicity unbroken, to lead them straight into meditation without any intellectual training?

Many times it has happened that wolves have stolen away small children. Some forty years ago, near Calcutta, two girls were found in the forests. And about ten years ago, near Lucknow, a boy was found who had been raised by wolves. He had grown quite big—about fourteen years old. He had received no training, never gone to school, never lived among humans. A little child lifted from the cradle by wolves, he grew up among them. He could not even stand on two legs, because that too is part of education. Do not think that you stand on two legs by yourself; you were taught to do so. The human body is fashioned to go on all fours. No child is born walking on two legs; he walks on all fours. Two-legged walking is learned. Ask the scientists, the anatomists; they say something striking: man’s body can never be…

Beloved Osho, if intellect is such an obstacle in the journey towards self-realization, is not then training and sharpening of it just useless? Is it not possible that because of their innocence and expressiveness, children should be helped to move into meditation directly, without imparting them any training in the intellect?

It is worth consideration, it is significant, and the question naturally arises, that if intellect is such a big obstacle, why train it in the first place? Why not introduce children to meditation while they are still innocent and simple, instead of sending them to university? Instead of shaping their logic and thinking faculty, instead of educating them, why not drown them into meditation in their innocence and simplicity? If intellect is an obstacle, why help it grow? Why not get rid of it before developing it? It would have been alright if intellect was only an obstacle. But an obstacle can also become a stepping-stone. You are walking on a pathway and there is a huge rock lying on the pathway. Now, this is an obstacle, and you may return from there thinking the pathway does not go anywhere further. But if you climb on the rock, a new…